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Sunday, November 7, 2010

Japanese Cream Bread

Just bought a new cookbook, "Magic Bread" by Alex Goh. I just can't resist collecting new cookbooks especially if it has anything to do with baking and in particular bread making. I love bread, u know. Needed to justify the unnecessary money spent by trying out the recipes and I chose this one, Japanese Cream Bread.

The dough is very tender and very pleasant to handle. I guess the whipping cream provided enough fat/grease for it to be not too sticky. I didn't even need to flour my work surface while shaping the dough. However, the the dough took longer to rise than what the recipe called for. Instead of 40 minutes, I waited 2 hours for it to double in volume in the first rise and another 1 1/2 hours instead of 50 minutes for the second rise. Maybe I didn't put in the right amount of yeast as my digital scale konked-out and I had to use my manual kitchen scale. This old manual kitchen scale has a gradient of 10g unlike my digital one which can measure more accurately 1g at a time. And so, to measure 6g of instant yeast needed was really a guessing game for me.

Despite the longer proofing time needed than called for, all is forgiven when I pulled the bread apart. The springy network of gluten and open crumb surprised me and I knew for sure the bread was going to be soft.

I can't help poking and pressing & pulling on the crumb and feeling pleased with myself. Without wasting anymore time, I quickly tried a slice and it was indeed very soft and has a light spring to it when chewed on. I was over the moon!

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This "Japanese Cream Bread" hands down is the softest bread I've ever made and it trumps over the "Soft Yoghurt Bun" I made and blogged about earlier. It also stayed soft till the next day unlike the "Soft Yoghurt Buns" which turned a little gummy.

Japanese Cream Bread
(taken from "Magic Bread" by Alex Goh)

Ingredients

A) 120g bread flour
85 g boiling water

B) 380g bread flour
75g sugar
6gsalt
8g instant yeast

C) 120g cold milk
100g whipping cream
1 cold egg

D) 40g Butter

Method

1) Mix ingredients A together to form a rough dough. Cover and let cool, then keep in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours.
2) Mix together ingredients B, then add all of ingredients C and combine well. Add in the refrigerated dough from A, knead together till well combined. Then, add the Butter from D, knead until elastic.
3) Let the well kneaded dough proof for 40 minutes. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and mould round and let rest for 10 minutes.
4) Flatten each dough pieces and roll into oblong shape place 3 pieces into a greased 17x9x6.5 cm loaf tin. Make 4 loafs.
5) Let proof for 50 minutes. Bake at 180 degrees Centigrade for 20-25 minutes.

Note: I used bigger loaf tins and made two bigger loaves of bread by dividing the dough into six pieces, and placed 3 pieces into each tin.

I fund your blog through hanushi . I am a bread craze , and happen to see this post of yours which I think I will definitely give it a try. I have load s of Japanese fresh dairy whipping cream in my fridge which my hubby brought back from Tokyo. I guess I have no reason to miss making this bread! Thais for sharing!!

i made this bread a few months ago, and it looked EXACTLY like it does in your pictures. perfect recipe!!! this bread was so fluffy and yummy, and made my whole house smell like a bakery :-) needless to say, i ate all of it in just three days lol